Software applications are moving towards a cloud model. The existing business models in cloud include two party systems, where there are a provider and a consumer of resources. One trend is evolving towards a multiple party scenario with application mash-ups and compositions of resources. This is referred to as a federated scenario. In a federated scenario, multiple domains can participate with multiple roles in the cloud. Existing policy based authorization systems do not work in a multi-domain federated authorization environment, as they have been designed to work in an enterprise authorization setting. The users are on-boarded from participating domains in the domain, where the resources exist. This can result in replication of subscriber databases and access controls.